The 2016 World Bank report on worldwide per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) identified Bangladesh as a lower middle-income country based on its consistent GDP growth throughout last decade (World Bank, 2016). To maintain this growth rate and meet the radical demand for human resources in increasingly globalised world markets, the country needs to communicate more effectively with the outside world. Inevitably, this means improving the quality of English teaching and learning. The significance of English, as the globallingua franca, to Bangladeshi learners is at its zenith. In this developing country, however, economic constraints mean that funds allocated to education are limited compared to many other Southeast Asian countries (Habib & Adhikary, 2016). Even given the generally low level of educational standards in Bangladesh (Islam, 2015), the standard of English language teaching and learning has decreased alarmingly in recent years (Hamid, 2011). English language education in Bangladesh has always been problematic, despite various attempts to initiate curriculum reform. As Hamid & Baldauf (2008) point out, the first of these major shifts in the ELT curriculum took place in the mid-1990s, when the traditional Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) was replaced with a curriculum based on a Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) model. The principal objective of this article is to review the major problems associated with ELT in Bangladesh that have hindered the implementation of the new CLT curriculum from the perspective of teachers, and eventually to make recommendations for more effective ELT curriculum reform.

Given the significance of English in the global world, English language teaching in Bangladesh has become subject to a supreme concern in maintaining economic growth and developing a skilled workforce. In this article, several barriers have been discussed based on a critical analysis of published materials. This review article covers several key issues such as the status of English in the country; English in education policies; factors affecting the implementation of communicative language teaching curriculum, method, and materials in Bangladesh; validity of the current assessment and its washback effect on English language teaching in Bangladesh; and current situation of teachers’ professional development. The article concluded with language policy and planning implications for policymakers, curriculum and material developers, public exams’ test-setters, and future English teacher training programmes, keeping the overall development of ELT in Bangladesh in mind.

New norms of linguistic ideology and practices emerged as English grows in higher education in non-English speaking countries. English Medium Instruction (EMI) has been formalised by overlooking the role of other (e.g. native) languages in knowledge construction and communication. This study investigates STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) teachers’ and students’ language-related ideologies about translanguaging at a private university in Bangladesh where English has been adopted as an instructional medium. The participants of this study include 6 university teachers and 10 students from STEM background. In-depth interviews with teachers and students reveal that, while English has been used as the official language for instruction, translanguaging has been highlighted for its purposeful use and significance in STEM classrooms, primarily in the construction of knowledge, communication, and scientific meaning-making. The findings of the study also shed light on the mismatch between macro-level English-only monolingual language policy adoption driven by contemporary ideologies associated with English, and micro-level stakeholders’ ideologies of translanguaging in STEM pedagogy. This study, therefore, argues for a change in the way of looking at bilinguals’ language practices and embracing the linguistic rights and reality for more flexible and inclusive language policy in higher education.

The achievement of curriculum goals and objectives, to a large extent, depends on how assessment methods are designed, implemented, monitored, and evaluated. English language learning in Bangladesh has miserably failed, and ineffective assessment methods may be largely attributed to this failure. This paper attempts to address various aspects and issues of English language assessment in Bangladesh in relation to English language learning as a curricular reform and the education policy of the country. The analysis revealed that there was always a gap between the principles of assessment embedded into the curriculum and the actual assessment practices. Furthermore, heavily hard hit by the high-stakes testing, the curriculum, the learners, and the instructors need to be liberated from this vicious policy. The review concluded with a recommendation that teachers need to develop assessment literacy through teacher education programs that are essential to helping teachers to acquire knowledge, skills, professionalism, and assessment expertise.

English-medium instruction (EMI) has been perceived as a key strategy through which universities, propelled by academic, political, social and economic motives, respond to the influence of globalisation (Altbach & Knight, 2007). This has been fuelled by the fact that English, defined as the global common language, is needed to create the knowledge base in global tertiary education (Fishman, 2000). In the process, English has become the universal second language of advanced education (Brumfit, 2004), due to the value attached to the language in present times and the advantage of using the language in the existing global language order (Zhang, 2017). These motivations have contributed to the global phenomenon of English being the medium of instruction (MOI), and higher education has been the venue where EMI could be implemented more consistently (Dearden, 2014). This has resulted in the generation of a growing body of work on how universities plan their language policies (Liddicoat, 2016).

English as a medium of instruction (MOI) has become an important tool for universities to produce knowledgeable and skilled graduates. In Bangladesh, public and private universities remain distant in terms of policies related to MOI. The current study was undertaken to reach a tangible conclusion that would reflect “what should be the MOI in Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), Bangladesh.” This qualitative study involved seven senior university teachers with more than 15 years of teaching experience. Data were analyzed using discourse analysis. Findings show that the participants prefer the Bangla language as MOI to produce knowledgeable graduates, who would contribute to the growth of the nation. However, the authors strongly suggest the implementation of a bilingual curriculum in which instruction is delivered in both English and Bangla to impart knowledge to the students. It is also suggested that a national language-in-education policy be implemented, rather than the existing alien programs, to enrich students’ knowledge acquisition.